Turkish Man Charged with Electrocuting Wife for Having a Girl

29-year-old Turkish man charged with electrocuting his wife while speaking on the phone to police who failed to avert the crime.

By Elad Benari, Canada

First Publish: 6/7/2014, 1:48 AM

Muslim women (illustration)

Flash 90

A Turkish man is charged with electrocuting his wife as punishment for giving birth to a girl while on the phone to police who failed to avert the crime, media reported Friday, according to AFP.

The 29-year-old from southeastern Diyarbakir province does not deny murdering his wife by placing a live electric cable under her chin as she slept, a day after their second baby girl was born in January, the report said.

The Turkish Vatan newspaper published on its front page a transcript of a telephone call the man placed to police in which he announced his murderous intent, in real time.

“I killed someone,” the man told the police operator, according to the transcript.

“Who did you kill?” asked the officer on the other end.

“I am killing my wife right now,” said the man.

“Did you kill her or are you killing her?” the officer asked.

“Well, she isn't dead yet. But I am killing her if the murder is halal (permissible in Islam),” the man replied.

The officer then asked if the suspect had a problem with his wife.

“I am telling you that I killed my wife but you are asking what the problem was,” the man replied.

“I closed her mouth as she is in the throes of death,” he then said.

At that point the police operator snapped into action, “OK, wait. I am sending a unit”.

A defense lawyer told the court at a hearing Wednesday that his client killed his wife because she gave birth to “a girl once again”.

The suspect, a waiter at a local restaurant in the Kurdish-majority region, also has a four-year-old daughter.

The lawyer reported criticized police for failing to talk the suspect out of his crime, saying, according to AFP, “If a police officer with a high persuasive capacity and training were on the phone, (the woman) would be alive today.”

The case was the latest example of what rights activists say is a failure by EU hopeful Turkey to protect women from domestic violence.

Men killed 214 women and 10 children in Turkey last year, according to a 2014 study by the Ankara-based Hacettepe University cited by AFP.

The same study revealed that 15 percent of women were killed simply because they wanted a divorce.

Domestic violence and honor killings are an issue in the Arab world, though Lebanon recently passed a law making domestic violence a criminal offense.

April’s move came after a years-long campaign by civil society groups in a sectarian Arab country steeped in conservativism.

A report last November found Egypt to be the worst women's rights abuser in the Arab world. A UN report in April found that 99.3% of Egyptian women and girls had been sexually harassed.

Honor killing is also prevalent in the Palestinian Authority (PA), both in the PA-assigned areas of Judea and Samaria as well as in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

A senior PA official said in February that there had been a rise of over 100% in the number of "honor killings" in 2013 compared to the previous year.

The UN organization for women recently decried the rising rates of violence against women in the PA, highlighting that the "worrying increase in the rate of femicide, from 13 in 2012 to 28 in 2013, demonstrates a widespread sense of impunity in killing women."

(Arutz Sheva’s North American Desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)